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I'm sure that this has somehow to do with fragrance, although actually I'm not sure. I can tie it in by the end perhaps. Suffice it to say that this post is not about "what frag would Lana wear" or "if Lana were a scent, what would it be?"

At work I got looped into a discussion about the one-woman culture war that is LDR. Specifically, I was discussing with my colleagues the long video for "Ride," with its nearly five-minute spoken introduction. Broadly,

I've recently repurchased the three fragrances that made up my steady rotation in high school and college, just to see how much they've changed (and how much I have, for that matter). Drakkar Noir and Grey Flannel were thoroughly pleasant reintroductions. Calvin by Calvin Klein, however, turned out a grave disappointment--even allowing for the distortions of hindsight, I have difficulty believing that the drear contents of this little blue bottle are the same as they were in 1981. A smear of

Like Swedish death metal or Byzantine icons, cologne is essentially a narrow and conservative form. That makes genius within the genre all the more impressive: as the smaller details are the only really variable elements, they have to carry the composition.

Some weeks ago I tried some Acqua di Parma Colonia Essenza in a store, and it seemed impossible that any fragrance could lift my spirits so suddenly and decisively. Pure transport and unlike anything I had ever smelled before.

I mentioned before my desire for a "fall urban pastoral," something cool, smoky, citified, and fundamentally unsweet. This quest has led me over the last few weeks to various odd beasts and not-so-near-misses, but has also generated a number of thoughtful proposals. One of the most promising of these came in the form of Nostalgia by Santa Maria Novella, whose enthusiasts claimed for it a power to transport the wearer to Le Mans in the summer of 1972.

I'm thinking about The Guide right now, as I suppose many Basenoters do from time to time. LT and Tania's seminal book, now a strapping four-year-old and into its second edition, indicated a new way of thinking and writing about fragrance much as (I am indebted to anomie for this insight) Robert Christgau's Village Voice columns fundamentally shifted the grounds of pop music criticism, tightening it, sharpening it, demanding that everything essential fit in one hook-laden paragraph.